Because The Night Belonged To Them
by Tom Without A Turkey
Summary: One escort, one mentor, adrift in the world around them, the nights their only form of solace. Short story.


Author's Note #1: I don't own Hunger Games. Legalese, legalese. Trust me, if I did, Mockingjay would have been written differently. More legalese and more legalese. I would have also made Hayffie canon.

Author's Note #2: Thank my awesome beta, TycheSong, for the editing goodness that she is going to contribute to this fic. (I jumped the gun and published ahead of time. I'm impulsive.) Also, check out her Harry Potter SS/HG stories. They're awesome.

And as always...: Please review. It compels me to write more.

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><p>Haymitch wanted love to hurt him, to shove him into oncoming traffic, to cut his lip open, to show him how it is all his fault. He wanted love to stab him, to kick him to the side, to leave him dying on the ground. Because, if it did, at least it would be honest.<p>

In this world, he felt that things were either harsh or cruel illusions of beauty. The illusions are the worst to him, shimmering with promises that will shatter on the floor once you get too close, cutting you just that much more. He refused to be set up for such a fall, so, if he should find himself in love, if he has to, he'd prefer it to hurt, stabbing him in the chest, instead of the back, so he can see the betrayal head on, so he can see so-called "love" being used as the weapon that it really is.

In this world, there are only weapons.

And the best ones are self-administered.

Haymitch tipped back the last of his gin, allowing the searing liquid to burn along his throat, delighting in the pain of the physical, so different from the constant throbbing of the past. The dull traffic sounds of the Capitol drifted up to his dark hotel room, deceptively cheerful, like the hypnotic sound of a beehive. The neon lights from the streets below arced softly into his room through the floor-to-ceiling windows. The mod furniture and decorations were no longer cheerful and chic, but malevolent and shadowy. He heard another honking of a car horn. Another whoosh of traffic. Another shift of neon light casted the shadows about, giving the hotel living room the unnerving effect that it was alive.

With numb, clumsy fingers that didn't feel like his own, he reached for the gin bottle sitting on the side table. Unscrewed the top. Let it drop unceremoniously on the thick, white carpeting. Poured the gin into a crystal, high ball glass. Toasted the Capitol.

"Happy Hunger Games."

He then tipped back the liquid once more.

He loved it when it hurt.

* * *

><p>End of day two. Headed back to the roof. He picked up a bottle of Scotch from his room, along with another crystal tumbler, although, when he looked at it, he didn't know why he brought it in the first place. Should have cut out the middle man.<p>

He continued to walk up the staircase leading to the rooftop, the clinical green fluorescent lights giving the chrome railing a sickly sheen, like it should be part of a hospital.

District 12's escort died today. Never made it to a hospital. He overdosed on some high grade opium at around 2am at another hotel, with a far-too young, enslaved rent-a-boy dressed in leather. The rent-a-boy was left to scurry up and down the crimson carpeted halls, trying to find an avox to help, screaming that he didn't do it, that he found him like that, that's all he knew. He swore.

It didn't stop the Capitol from executing him anyway.

Haymitch paused before opening the exit door before him that would lead him out to the darkness of the rooftop, to the darkness that would envelope him in the safeness of its mantle, at least for a little bit, until daylight broke.

He had no idea who would replace them. Both of them.

He wished that it would be nobody.

He then opened the door, which swung with an unsteady _whoosh_ and a puckering of air. He stepped out, letting the door give a satisfying metallic _clink_ behind him, the coolness of the velvet night gliding across his skin, tingling like curling, menthol cigarette smoke.

She was out there, with an askew bubblegum pink wig, the escaping tendrils of her real, dish water blond hair curling along the nape of her neck, matted with sweat. She turned to look at him and he at once noticed her heavy, makeup-smudged eyes and tight, sad mouth. She clutched a lace-edged handkerchief to her chest when she wobbled on her satin, hot pink high heels, as if, despite her decadent opulence, she was drunk on her sloppy, depressing existence. This endeared her to him.

"Want a drink, Sweetheart?" he said. He held up the bottle of scotch. Her blue eyes latched onto his, alive with an impulsive, spring-loaded energy – Eager to do something bad. To hurt. She nodded.

So, he poured the bisque, blond liquid, first into the cut crystal for her, then into his mouth with the searing pain that he had developed a twisted, barbed wire affection for. She watched him with disgusted admiration as she took grim little sips from the cold, cut glass.

"Replacement?" He finally ventured. Took another pull from his bottle.

A pause. She nodded, then took a sip.

"That's me."

He bobbed his head in a gray, fluid motion.

"My condolences."

He then placed the Scotch bottle next to her elbow on the building's ledge with a quietly volatile _Clunk. _Her lips tightened even more.

"You'll need it more than me tomorrow."

He then left her. The night had become too suffocating.

* * *

><p>Her cutting sobs were grotesquely colorful, like her dreadful, lilac, get up. Her eyeshadow ran down her face, staining her silk, ivory handkerchief purple as she violently dabbed at her eyes. Another sob escaped her. Haymitch simply sat across from her on the couch, chin embedded in his chest, crystal tumbler filled with brandy in his hand. As he watched her make her animal sounds, he sat and brooded in a bad-mannered and slightly drunk way. It was too late in the night to put up with her overwrought sentimentality, which surprised and unnerved him.<p>

"The more you do this, Sweetheart, the easier it gets," he finally spat out, sarcasm lacing the ends of the letters. There was a long pause as his hackneyed phrase hung in the room like cancer-inducing smog. She glared at him with a wounded rage.

"With a bottle?" she qipped. Her question had meant to cut, but it rolled off his emotional state, not finding a single crack in his interior to rest upon.

"Whatever it takes." He said back, drinking from the tumbler to emphasize the point, the little nugget of amber suddenly too bright against his azure blue suit for Effie's liking.

She took the bottle of brandy from the mini-bar between them and drank quickly, wetly, the bobble of her throat moving the delicate white skin of her neck with tugs of quiet desperation. Haymitch watched in awed horror as she finally finished the entire bottle, pulling the glass away with a smug flourish as she wiped her liquor-moistened lips with the back of her hand. The bottle clunked against the table. Hollow.

"Goodnight, Haymitch."

Her deep purple heels hobbled away with a drunken whimsy on the bone white marble floor.

He couldn't help but be aroused by her pride.

* * *

><p>Year number two. Two more deaths.<p>

Terrible things come in twos.

"Here we are again," She simply stated. It was the two of them alone in a darkened hotel room, the television being the only thing on. Her blue eye shadow was flowing across her cheeks, giving it the effect of night rain, before she wiped it away with yet another destroyed handkerchief. The apples of her cheeks were now tinged an unnatural, light navy blue. She hiccupped a sticky cough as she gripped the side of the hotel mattress with its gold, satin duvet. She suddenly hated the duvet. The television was now playing static sounds of stupid commercial pop songs about sex. Haymitch savagely turned off the television with an electric click, then tossed the remote onto the side table with a plastic clatter. He took another drink of vodka from the glass next to him.

A rain had begun and it was making a soothing pitter-patter against the windows, the water trails creating dusky cross-cross shadows across the bed and their weary forms.

Effie sat up on the bed next to Haymitch, so that they were sitting against the mahogany head board, their feet resting against the mattress, one petite set wearing deep blue silk heels, the other wearing sooty, scuffed brown leather, both sets sitting side-by-side.

"It doesn't get easier," She said to him as she twisted her blue topaz ring, the last of her tears draining away. Haymitch sighed as he pulled a cigar from his coat pocket, the sticky sweet smell of the tobacco filling the space between them.

"I tried to hide it from you as long as I could," He said before sticking the cigar in his mouth, lighting the end with sucking puffs, the smoke trailing out and occupying the room with its wrong-natured, damp richness. She watched the smoke travel across the room into her clothes, shoes, hair. She reveled in its badness, which is why she reached out to take the cigar from him. He let her. She then rolled the cigar between her fingers.

"I'm not a little girl," she said finally. "I would have figured it out."

"I know."

He then watched as her nude lips puckered around the cigar, remnants of her turquoise lipstick gathered in small, ugly clumps at the corners of her mouth. The end of the cigar glowed orange in the blue-gray of the night as she blew smoke rings across the bed.

"How do you do that?" he asked.

"Practice," she said as she blew more of the smoke, the rings providing a playful distraction, no matter how short lived. He then took her hand into his.

"Stay?"

She nodded yes as she blew out another ring. Her eyes were filled with uncertainty.

* * *

><p>"You didn't cry this time," he said once he turned off the television and looked at the woman next to him. More years had passed between them, but he always assumed her reaction would be the same. His was, as he took another drink from his schnapps-laden glass.<p>

Her mouth tightened as she moved off the bed and toward the bathroom.

Haymitch looked from his glass of schnapps to her as she mostly disappeared behind the bathroom door, just enough so he could still see a vertical sliver of her body. She toed off her lemon colored heels decorated with neon orange and pink flowers, revealing the translucent skin of her petite feet. She turned on the rushing tap water of the sink, and took pearl pink, heart shaped soaps from the container at the side. She quickly worked them into a rich lather in her hands. He watched as she tried to wash her face of the sticky makeup she wore, but as she saw her reflection crumble from Capitol socialite to a raw-faced women, her bottom lip trembled with her tears. She ripped off her wig and threw it on the floor, revealing messy, matted hair. Her vulnerability disgusted and scared her.

"Effie?" Haymitch asked as he watched her, abandoning his schnapps, concerned, unsure of what to do next. "Are you okay?"

She nodded her head in desperate, jerky movements as she furiously splashed water across her face, drenching the front of her dress as well, her bottom lip quivering all the more. She hiccupped loudly before she shouted, "Fine!" It came out meaner then she intended.

She quickly took down a washcloth from the towel rack and blotted her face clean as he entered the bathroom. She hiccupped again into the washcloth.

"I'm fine." She said gently as she put the washcloth back, then looked at his haunted reflection. His tousled, shoulder-length blond hair. The robin-egg blue tie that she had bought him in one of the boutiques in the Capitol. She loved having him stand before her in the night before the dawn, letting her deft fingers tie the satin into a Windsor knot. The memory of it warmed her. She gave him a bitter-sweet smile.

"Could you unzip me?"

He nodded.

"Of course, Sweetheart." He gave the zipper a little pull, splitting open the raw silk of her dress. He then placed a small kiss on the bony curve of her shoulder. She let out a contented sigh. The dress shimmied off of her.

* * *

><p>He could hear her fragile bare feet walk quietly across the carpet of the hotel room, the fibers briefly sticking to the bottoms. The rain had returned that year, the translucent, almost rainbow-like liquid landing on the floor-to-ceiling windows of his room, the streaks highlighted by the Capitol's unearthly glow. He sat in the dark in an old, wingback chair upholstered with heady, black leather, facing the windows as he looked out at the city below, the water pouring past cars, pedestrians, neon lights. He then looked down at his crystal, high-ball glass filled with whiskey. The ice had already melted most of the way, diluting the spirit's rich, brown color. He drank it anyway in one cool, clean sip, before filling the glass once more. He felt her flighty movements behind him, stirring the air like the flux of a butterfly's wings.<p>

She ran her thin, cold fingers through his limp, tired hair. He looked up at her profile, scrubbed clean of wigs and makeup. She was only wearing her pink, silk kimono and a sad, tight expression. Natural.

"They will be okay," she said after a moment, after them staying quiet in the dark for a touch too long. "They were before."

"Before there wasn't a Quell." He meant it to sound more savage, but the energy had been drained out of him. Instead, it sounded reserved and desperate, like his drinking. He gulped down the glass of whiskey once more. She wrinkled her nose, but said nothing.

He then took her extended hand, her miniature nails painted a frosted pink, like a row of small sea shells, and lifted himself from the chair.

And so they found themselves walking back to the bed together. A pair of two. He paused before the bed and slipped off his leather shoes, his socks, and his slacks, which he folded and put on the side table, as she waited for him patiently, for this was their routine. He then sat on the bed and she sat behind him. She tugged on his navy plain weave suit, which he easily shrugged out of, as well as his shirt and vest. Lastly, he handed her his robin-egg blue tie, the same one she had bought him so long ago. She brought it to her face, inhaling its masculine scent of whiskey and tobacco, it wrapping around her like a comforting shroud. She looked up at him.

"Can I keep this when you're not wearing it?"

It was an odd request, but he indulged her, mainly because he knew he wouldn't need it anymore when the dawn came to reap him, but also because he wanted her to have something from him, something nice, before the inevitable took him away. She smiled in response to his shadowy kindness, placing the tie on her nightstand. She then slipped off her kimono, revealing her simple blue nightgown, before she snuggled in the crisp, clean sheet of the bed. He got in under the sheet as well, laying next to her, wrapping them both in a ball. He draped his free arm across her slim frame that almost felt weightless against him. The hotel's central heater kicked on with a desperate little whine. She softly kissed the tip of his finger in the dim, bluish glow of the rain-stained moonlight.

"At least we have this."

He murmured in agreement as he pressed his face into her stiff, comforting hair, pulling her compact body closer to his, reveling in the stickiness of their skin.

"Every year," he said back as he kissed the nape of her neck, drinking in her scent like a man condemned to death row. He then felt his heart twinge with the first sign of hurting.

At least they had this. Until they didn't.

Because, in this world, this was their last year and they weren't meant to be.


End file.
